Policy Review and Modeling Analysis of Mitigation Measures for Coronavirus Disease Epidemic Control, Health System, and Disease Burden, South Korea

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

ince the fi rst reported outbreak in Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has infected >210 million persons and resulted in nearly 4.4 million deaths worldwide as of August 2021 (1).Many countries have responded to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic with unprecedented large-scale anticontagion policies, including closure of nonessential businesses and stay-at-home restrictions (2).Such policies have had measurable effects on slowing down the epidemic during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (1-4).In South Korea, the fi rst case of COVID-19 was reported on January 20, 2020, and an additional 27 cases were confi rmed by February 10.All confi rmed case-patients either had international travel histories linked to the cities with confi rmed cases or were the contacts of index case-patients.Many of these early cases were likely linked to travel between Wuhan and South Korea during the Lunar New Year holiday on January 24-28, 2020.However, on February 18, a woman in Daegu, the epicenter of the initial COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea, was the fi rst case-patient who had no international travel history or contact with another index case-patient.Epidemiologic surveillance showed that she attended a large Shincheonji Church meeting before her diagnosis.Subsequently, >2,500 cases (62% of all confi rmed cases in Daegu) were confi rmed positive and epidemiologically linked to this church.The rapid surge in cases quickly overwhelmed all available hospital beds and intensive care unit (ICU) capacity in Daegu (5,6).In response to the rapid surge, the government of South Korea implemented intensive policies for testing, contact tracing, and quarantining of all close and potential contacts of index cases, and social distancing (7).We review the timeline of key policies and practices implemented for COVID-19 epidemic control during the early 2020 epidemic in South Korea.